MAMTAQ

About the Book

An early recollection of my childhood is that of horse drawn wagons traveling down the streets of the city where I lived. World War II had ominously disrupted the normal patterns of life and gasoline rationing played a major part of it. The highly reduced availability of this fuel affected not only the lives of individuals but corporations, too. To overcome this lack of gasoline many delivery companies resourcefully brought the old antiquated means of horse and wagon back into use. Thus the rhythmic clip-clop sound of horse's hooves on the street was a regular occurrence in my younger years. One very frequent occasion of this was the milk dropped off at our doorstep.

The milk of those days was mainly contained in glass bottles. And every other day the milkman exchanged the empty ones placed at our front door with full bottles of milk. Because of this regular contact with the milkman he became more like a friend than a deliveryman. As a friend he would occasionally invite me to take short rides with him in the milk wagon. There really wasn't much entertainment for kids in those days so this was a highlight for me in my childhood. Usually he had me remain in the wagon as he made the deliveries. But occasionally he asked me to deliver a single dairy product to a home that he pointed out.

The wagon had open doors on each side so the milkman could exit conveniently in either direction to make his deliveries. One of the first things he taught me was concerning safety. When leaving a moving wagon you must jump off and land on the correct foot. Departing on the right side you must land on your right foot and leaving on the left side you need to land on your left foot. He told me that if I didn't do it this way I would trip over my own feet. The first time I exited and landed on the wrong foot my skinned knee was avid proof to the value of his lesson.

Those were noisy trips on that rickety old milk wagon since it was loaded down with dozens of metal crates. Each crate on the wagon was loosely holding full and/or empty glass milk bottles. And everything including the wagon itself seemed to rattle against each other as it lumbered down the street. Summer trips were a little quieter for then the crates were covered with crushed ice. I recall on hot days how the milkman often invited me to have a small treat. This was a piece of ice to chew on in the heat of the day.

While the rides seldom lasted much more than a block or two I still vividly remember many details of those trips. One part of the wagon that I clearly recall was the long leather reigns leading to the horse. They passed through two small holes located above the front window of the wagon. From there they hung down toward the floor and then they were loosely tied together to prevent them from slipping out of the holes. I remember that the milkman rarely used these reigns because the horse knew every delivery stop on the route.

After depositing his dairy products and retrieving the empty bottles from one or two front porches the milkman would simply tell the horse "Giddy-up". The wagon would immediately lurch forward and rattle on to the next group of homes. There on its own accord the horse would stop at the next delivery location. The milkman seldom had to say "Whoa" to the horse. When he did it was because someone along the route had come running out to make an extra purchase. I never knew how large his route was but the milkman told me the horse knew every stop, intersection and turn of the entire trip.

This clearly indicated to me the degree of intelligence a horse can have. I now began to ponder if it was possible for a horse or other animal to have feelings or emotions. An answer came to that question a few years later as I read an interesting article concerning some delivery horses. The story told of a city where many horses were utilized in this manner and a problem that developed among them. The horses had become listless and i

About the Author

My career in writing began in my threes. After learning to spell my name I diligently practiced on the walls of our home. Unfortunately the publisher rejected my early attempts. Undaunted, throughout school I continued trying to put my ideas down on paper. Creativity, however, was too time consuming so I decided on a life in industrial engineering. While in college an English professor encouraged me saying, “You know how to write,” At the time I rejected his offer to have some papers published but his inspiring words sustained me for years. Retirement now provides me sufficient time to write.